In the packaging of material whose quality is subject to deterioration upon exposure to the ambient, it has long been popular to employ a relatively rigid container having an access opening which is sealed by a membrane and/or foil-like seal. Not only do seals of this sort prevent exposure of the contents to the ambient, they also provide a good indication, even upon only cursory inspection, as to whether the contents of the container have been tampered with. This, of course, is frequently an important consideration where the contents of the container are food stuffs or pharmacuticals.
The seals, however, are not without one substantial drawback. Frequently, they are difficult to remove completely. Thus, if the contents of the container are in liquid form, the residual part of the seals that remains on the container about the access opening frequently will interfere with clean pouring of the contents. In other cases, complete removal of the seal in order to achieve maximum access to the contents, whether the contents are liquid or solid, requires multiple efforts at removing the seal before the entirety of the seal is removed.
Early attempts to solve this difficulty typically included the provision of a tab that extended beyond the periphery of the access opening to which the seal was bonded. In theory, grasping of the tab would allow the seal to be peeled back from the opening in a single piece to entirely open the access opening More often than not, however, the tab would tear off of the seal or the seal itself would tear such that only part of the same was removed upon pulling of the tab.
Another attempt to minimize the seal removing difficulty is represented by the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 3,402,855 issued Sep. 24, 1968 to Schroeder, et al. Schroeder, et al. discloses a container that is typically closed by such a seal and wherein the seal is in turn protected by a conventional cap or cover for the container. When it is desired to achieve access to the contents of the container, the conventional cover is discarded and a dispensing cover having an open spout is placed on the vessel and rotated thereon such that cutters on the dispensing spout pierce and cut or tear the seal to open the container.
This approach, however, is not satisfactory for a number of reasons. Firstly, the cut seal remains within the container and, if food stuffs are employed therein, may become embedded in the same and ultimately enter the mouth of a consumer along with the food stuff, obviously an undesirable occurrence. Secondly, if the contents of the container are in liquid form, the fact that the severed seal remains within the container may result in the same wholly or partially occluding the access opening to prevent free release in pouring of the liquid therefrom.
Secondly, two component parts, a conventional cover and a special dispensing cover including the cutters are required, making the construction inordinately costly. Numerous other disadvantages will be readily apparent to those knowledgeable in the art.
To avoid these and other problems, Debetencourt in U.S. Pat. No. 4,754,889, issued July 5, 1988, has proposed another approach. According to Debetencourt, a single, non-conventional cover is employed and includes teeth on its interior along with a depressed central interior section that extends towards the container a greater distance than the teeth. A membrane or foil-like seal that is intended to close the container is bonded to the depressed center of the cap. The seal may be severed simply by pushing the cap toward the access opening to stretch the seal such that it comes in contact with the cutting edge on the cap and is ultimately severed. Because the seal is bonded to the center of the cap, once the cap is removed from the container, the seal remains with it and cannot remain within the container to become embedded with the contents thereof or hinder the dispensing of the contents through the access opening.
This approach, while an improvement, is also not without fault. For one, the nature of the opening process is such that there is no assurance that the seal will be severed about its entire periphery which is to say one or more strands of the seal may remain, attaching the center of the seal to the periphery which remains bonded to the container. The strands, while easily broken when the cover is removed, can be an impediment to easy pouring of liquid contents from the container. They also may prevent the establishment of a good seal between the cap and the container if the cap is used to reclose the container when part of the contents remain therein.
Even more importantly, because the seal is bonded to the cover, it is impossible to inspect the seal upon removal of the cover to see if the seal has been violated because the act of removing the cover to expose the seal itself breaks the seal.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above problems.